Our SSAS pilot was started using the fully-fledged developer's edition where we added 2 additional languages. We tested the testcube on a standard edition , opening the project in 2008R2 BIDS. All objects showed red underlining with screentips pointing at the inability to deploy translations in a standard edition.

However, the build cube could be processed and showed correct translations when explored with Excel.

According to the 'supported features' page - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993(v%3Dsql.105).aspx#SSAS - translations should be enabled for standard edition.

I am at a loss what to conclude from this. Can we port translated cubes from developer to standard , but not develop on standard regarding translations ?

Translations is enabled for Developer and Enterprise. You will not be able to deploy them to standard. There is a way to turn off Enterprise-only features in Developer. You should be able to google where to change the settings.

I took the project to a Standard Edition server and processed - with translations - to the SE Analysis Database without any problems. When I open the database in BIDS directly the errors in BIDS return. When I open the cube in Excel I can see the dutch translations (whereas the SSAS database has English - United States as default language.

It all does not make any sense to me, but well, it's Microsoft I guess :)